


Saints Preserve Us

by PlaidLove



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: no beta we die like men
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-06
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2020-10-10 22:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20535911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlaidLove/pseuds/PlaidLove
Summary: Those Who Slither in the Dark have been building a new weapon to unleash upon the land. And to acquire the final materials, they have captured the right hand to the Archbishop herself: Seteth.Major spoilers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> plot bunny. may or may not continue.

For several horrid and lurching moments, Seteth didn’t know where he was. He was uncomfortably pinned to the ground- why were his legs- where was his trusty wyvern-

Seteth gulped in air and returned to reality. He had been half thrown from the saddle. While his legs were still entangled from when Eudora had been shot down by the sudden appearance of enemies from the right flank, it was by the Goddess’ mercy the wyvern had not landed on him.

She still breathed, but even as Seteth slowly (painfully) sat up to begin undoing his straps he saw how labored her breathing was and she was not making the effort to stand.

“Hang in there, my friend,” Seteth murmured. Anything remotely near regular speaking levels was proving difficult to maintain. With one leg freed, he placed a hand upon her scaley shoulder. “Help will arrive soon.”

The distant sounds of battle trickled into his consciousness with every moment he took stock of both his and Eudora’s injuries. Flung out of reach, past the gouges of torn up earth from their crash landing, he could see the glint of his lance’s blade. His bindings came loose on the other leg and Seteth hissed in relief despite the fresh wave of pain it brought him. Really, his joints were not made for this anymore. The showering sparks of pain that erupted when Seteth shuffled to his feet confirmed that his ribs were indeed cracked.

He turned with a hand outreached to Eudora to examine her injuries. Still she lay curled away from him and unmoving. If she were beyond saving...

Then Seteth was breathless and stumbling. Something had hit him _ hard _ and it drove the air from his lungs and threw him forward to cling to Eudora’s saddle in an attempt to keep from pitching over. Dumbfounded, Seteth pushed himself away from the leather to see the fletching of an arrow from the corner of his eye. He reached for it, stupidly, but fresh pain erupted in his shoulder at the effort. He had been _ shot _ at.

Seteth had the presence of mind to curse himself for not going for his lance first. Of _ course _ there were enemies still about. But he had an axe-

He kept the spare weapong nearly strapped behind the saddle. Seteth hauled himself back up, but his fingers felt numb and slippery and he couldn’t _ think _ straight. Couldn’t calculate how far away help was, where the enemy was, and goodness he was dizzy and heavy all of a sudden.

_Bloodloss_? Some part of Seteth’s mind wondered even while he tugged heavily on buckles. He couldn’t muster the strength, and instead had to rely on his own weight to pull the damned thing open. No. His injuries were not that serious.

The arrowhead throbbed in his shoulder and his axe fell from its hold to lay useless on the ground. Seteth hissed in frustration and held onto Eudora in desperate need to keep on his feet even while the world rapidly tipped into noisy grey.

“Beware the wyvern! It’s still alive.”

Seteth turned, his vision clouding, and darkly considered his incoming enemies. Too many to fight, he would- _ Flayn_. He needed to make sure they would not get to Flayn. He would stand his ground.

And in between heartbeats the effort of holding onto the straps became too great; Seteth collapsed.

-

Hours passed, not that Seteth knew, between bouts of awareness. He felt the wind in his face, and then the chill of being underground, and then complete darkness.

Where was he?

Seteth loathed being unaware on the best of days; and when he didn’t understand the complete darkness around him - of a distant red arrow that shone unnaturally, no there were _ more _\- the bitterness surged within and pushed away at the dense fog in his head.

A battle, the wind in his face, unknown soldiers-

He was on his back, Seteth finally realized, and a quick jerk of his wrists and ankles confirmed he was strapped down. Someone was going to pay dearly for this.

“Again.”

Seteth jerked in surprise. He could not twist his head far - nor did he _ want _ to, he felt as if twenty blacksmiths were all taking turns with their hammers against his skull - to see whoever spoke directly behind him.

“Who are you,” Seteth demanded. His throat was parched, but that only made the command in his voice all the more raw. “Show yourself and release me immediately.”

No one responded except for the embarrassed shuffling of feet. From his peripheral vision, Seteth watched as a syringe topped with a clear liquid came into view. He did not give them the satisfaction of a noise then it was jabbed into his arm.

“What is your purpose with me.” Clearly they did not want to kill him, was he to be made a bargaining chip to Lady Rhea? Laughable.

Once more there was no answer and Seteth did not try again. He clung to his clarity to examine his surroundings once again. For a sign, any clue beyond endless lines and darkness. Everything was unnaturally smooth. The ceiling that disappeared into darkness so that he could not see how high it was. Was he still underground? Did he imagine it? What of the battle. What of his allies?

...What of Flayn?

Seteth slept.

-

“Is it not a marvelous piece of machinery.” A slimy chuckle. “It could be art, had it not a more grand purpose.”

Silence settled like dust - dust? There was no dust here whatsoever. Everything gleamed, brightly polished, as though an army of maids had laid waste to every inch - and Seteth started awake once more as the voice went on.

He struggled to listen, but wished he hadn’t.

“Long ago my ancestors learned to make powerful tools. Powerful weapons. _ We _,” pride, anguish, and disgust slid across the word like oil over stones, “have continued that research in an attempt to refine it. I daresay our forefathers had perfected it as it was.”

A new red burned in the air. But instead of the strange, hard, clean lines inlaid into the walls, this red burned and pulsed. It spread like molten rock between the cracks of an ancient shield.

“A Hero’s Relic,” Seteth heard, even as he watched death replay itself a hundred times over in that blood colored shimmer. “Powerful beyond all reason. ...But times have changed. Weapons have changed. While we could not build upon the forging itself, we realized we could refine our ideas of what a weapon was. How large, how far it could reach, how much destruction it could do within its own power.”

Dread seeped into Seteth so deeply he felt he would be crushed from the sheer weight. He knew the voice spoke of the massive javelins of light. The false wrath of the goddess.

Robes shifted and then the voice was by his ear -_ in _ his ear. Two long nailed fingers drew back his hair to expose his jaw and ear.

“And for that, my dear friend, we will require your bones.”


	2. Chapter 2

“You have forgotten how to fly,” Macuil said. It was not an accusation, but Seteth heard the disappointment all the same.

“It… has been a while.” He had not flown in centuries. For Flayn. So that she may be hidden just a little longer. Safe from those who would harm her.

Something that sounded like a rockslide came from Macuil - a rare laugh. “You have always been cautious. Too cautious now that Seiros whispers to you again.”

“_Rhea,"_ Seteth had stressed, “has been nothing but accommodating. She has done so much-”

Macuil had begun gathering himself up to stand and leave - _ again _ \- and ignoring Seteth entirely. He feels like a petulant child, but Seteth calls up at him.

“Why have you forgotten how to walk among men?”

Macuil’s wings cast shadows the size of ships.

“Macuil!”

“Goodbye, brother. May we meet again.”

The earth shook when Macuil heaved himself into the air, and Seteth was left behind to watch him vanish into the clouds. He could not chase him anymore even if he wanted to.

-

The low and constant buzzing would drive Seteth mad long before any of the speeches his jailer, and he made them frequently enough, would. He sensed movement and opened his eyes to see another masked mage winding a bandage around his arm.

Seteth felt cold. They had bled him again.

He could do little but watch, whatever the guards on either side of him thought, as the mage finished and collected a glass pot (a beaker, Hanneman would insist) brimming with blood.

“We thank you for your contributions,” the voice lilted with laughter. Then they left, and the panel to his prison slid so seamlessly back into place it appeared there was no exit at all. At least he knew where it was now.

The guards unshackled him, his wrists heavy and boneless, and left him as well. In between the blood loss and drug, it was hours before Seteth sat up without his head threatening to fall off his shoulders. Another hour before his feet touched the floor.

His prison was smaller than his office. He had been afforded the decency of a bed that doubled as an examination table, toiletry in the corner, and a chair and table that had been bolted to the floor. Seteth had only the strength to lower himself in the chair before his knees gave out.

-

“I won’t wake up and be a dragon now will I?” A woman named Aegir had rubbed at her shoulder, where the patch was, and teased him with one of her signature smiles.

“I daresay not,” Cichol had said back, face drawn. There was a war to be won. “You will experience changes though.”

Her smile had turned tense. “And I accept them.” A breath to steel herself. “Cichol… what _ does _ it feel like when you change? Out of pure curiosity, I ask, and not that I am dreading the idea of one day my bones tear themselves apart to-”

“_Peace, _ Aegir. It will not happen.” He had waited until she was mollified. “As for changing… well it is a bit like standing up.”

“Standing up?”

“You are the same person, are you not? But you have folded yourself into a different… shape, so to speak. Straighten your legs, balance upon your feet, straighten your spine. It is merely about rearranging your body.”

“I… see,” Aegir had tapped her chin, unconvinced. “But, Cichol, when _ I _ am seated, I tend to keep the same amount of limbs and mass and teeth-”

“It is _ only _ a metaphor, Aegir.”

-

Seteth lurched. He had been nodding off again.

A plate and cup, both wooden, had been laid before him on the minuscule table; their contents were questionable in color, texture, and viscosity all in one. Across from him though, grey hands clasped and figure swathed in dark robes, stood his jailer.

“What do I call you?” Seteth asked before he could think on it more. “For all your visits to me, I have not been given it.”

And while he could not see it, but Seteth imagined the slow spread of a smile behind the pointed mask.

A voice like pond scum. “You may refer to me as… Lieutenant.”

“Very well, Lieutenant,” Seteth mustered every bit of dignity he could despite the circumstances. “What have you to ask of me today.”

From the last visits that Seteth could remember, the Lieutenant had pried Seteth about the state of Garreg Mach, the surrounding town, of history and fables and everything in between. The Lieutenant laughed and it was _ not _ a pleasant sound. A horrid gurgling of mud and waste that clashed with the _ never ending _ drone that emitted from the lights. Seteth felt ill.

He had been locked in the damned room for three days at the very least. But even for his knack for keeping time he could not account for however long his drug induced stupors had been. The guards stood outside so he could not track the changing of the guards nor glean anything from them.

Seteth envied Macuil’s talents countless times before, for his knack of reading between the lines and seeing the unseen, and he wished for them again. No, caution and faith seemed to be his sole tools.

The laughter finally came to a stop, leaving a vacuum in the little prison. The Lieutenant gestured to the plate of drugged gruel. “No questions today, unless you feel the urge to divulge Garreg Mach’s secret entrances.”

As if they weren’t aware of them or had spies searching for others. Seteth’s eyes narrowed in answer.

“No... ? Then you will be pleased to know you shall be allowed some light exercise today. We do need to keep you in good health after all.”

So that he could continue to fuel them with more blood. Taking his bones, as much as the Lieutenant had threatened to take from him, would be the end of that. Is that what they had intended for Flayn those years ago? To leech the blood from her until they had no more use for her? Had they wanted her bones as well?

The fury must have shown on his face for the Lieutenant laughed again.

-

His meal ignored, the Lieutenant summoned guards and Seteth had finally been let out. Hands restrained behind his back, yes, but out. Mercifully the buzzing died in volume as soon as the door slid closed behind them all, and Seteth was in a dark corridor. The inlaid lights, its noise still there bearable, were the only indication of where walls and floor were. It was disorienting.

And humiliating. Seteth had long been divulged of his cassock and shoes and was marched down the halls into a much larger, but still very much dark and underground, room in only his tunic and braies. But where the drone had ended, now Seteth could hear the rumble and clank of machinery - like hundreds of mills going at once - beneath his feet.

More lights in the shape of arrows burned in the distance, five from where Seteth stood, more perhaps deeper within. Then he was pushed forward and he and his guards both stood in the center of the room. The Lieutenant was joined by five other masked soldiers. Mages by the cut of their cloth.

“You have been quite the understanding guest,” the Lieutenant praised. Seteth felt a cold sweat begin to break out. Was this to be his execution? Had they gathered what they wanted and came to collect his bones for their monstrous weapons?

Escape had always been at the forefront of Seteth’s mind, but what few plans he had boiled down to waiting for allies or attempting to break free by sheer will alone. He was stronger than the average man, yes, but surrounded like this he would be dead within minutes.

Something jabbed into his upper arm and Seteth hissed in surprise. Another dosage. And another to his other arm.

“What are you _ doing._”

Seteth’s heart, already pounding from the prospect of death - of _ never seeing Flayn again, she will be alone and in danger _\- gave a lurch and then Seteth was kneeling on the smooth floor gasping for air. His head swam, his heart raced, and he felt like he was being torn in two.

A disconnected part of himself watched the guards step away and the mages behind the Lieutenant kneeled to press their hands to the floor - a pattern. There was a pattern inlaid into the floor, a _ spell _ -

“A combination of sedative and stimulant,” the Lieutenant said, even though Seteth heard nothing over the roar in his ears. “We know you would never change willingly for us, so we have decided upon the best course of action - as well as testing out a spell we have been developing.”

Gasping, Seteth pressed his forehead to the floor, seeking balance and the coolness for his spiking fever, and below him the spell lit up. Blue, as customary for the primary blocks of any spell. But only briefly before it was flashing red, an angry red, and the distorted void ringed by soul aching pinks and violets surrounded Seteth.

“It is a shame we cannot be more scientific about this process,” the Lieutenant lamented, the glass of their mask lit up by the spell. “But we do only have one test subject and a limited amount of time.”

The spell’s components had all linked and activated. Then Seteth was screaming.

“Come, beast, show us your true form.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> look. i don't know okay.


	3. Chapter 3

Tales of miracles had been often laid at Seteth’s feet - or rather, the image of Cichol that had risen from man’s legends. Time had warped the actual events, it took one arrow and turned it into a thousand or forced a creek to be a mighty river.

There had been a battle once. Cichol, spurred on by the trust in his brother’s aim, had once led his wyvern and battalion directly into the advance guard of enemy pegasi. The enemy had scattered like seeds from a dandelion to avoid being barrelled into and had left  _ one _ clear moment for Indech to fire. His brother’s arrow had whistled overhead, and sailed directly into the exposed neck of the enemy general.

His miracles, could they truly be called that, were not of divine intervention but of actively being  _ safe _ , and to defend. A general (his name carried for generations, only to be smoothed away by the tides of history) had been spared death by Cichol’s spearing away an axe meant for the man’s head.

He had  _ faith _ . Faith that had kept him and his men fighting tooth and nail to hold their position in another long forgotten battle, another lifetime, for just  _ a little longer _ because he knew that Macuil had devised a last minute flanking attack.

Cichol did not have Cethleann’s gift to mend a man’s spine, nor the voice and strength that Seiros had. Still had.

So perhaps he could perform one more miracle - and weather his captors’ patience and anger. To have faith in Rhea and Byleth to keep his daughter safe. 

-

Any simpleton’s introduction to magic would explain that pulses of energy were not uncommon - especially with large scale magic. Said pulses were even frequent within the confines of their abysmal little research outpost to affect local wildlife with the leftover wastes of leftover magic. So the Lieutenant had prepared for a large backlash - circles meant to siphon excess Nabatean power away for storage, runes mean to dispel lingering effects, the list could go on.

What the lieutenant had not anticipated was the  _ scale  _ of the energy.

The spell had activated flawlessly, linking and building like a greedy beast to dismantle the one they had captured. The symbols, layered and woven expertly, laid themselves into their beast’s back - ah yes, there was the screaming - to take root. Years - decades,  _ centuries _ \- of research into Nabathean physiology would lead to this crowning moment of victory.

And like a tsunami that frequented southern Fódlan and the Brigid archipelago, the backlash began. The spell no longer layered itself over their beast, but was being  _ pulled in _ . At once, like a crumbling building that had finally given in, the spell fell into disarray and exploded.

The Lieutenant had felt the air - forced faster and faster away from the sudden release of magic - tug at his clothes before he was shoved back, heels skidding as he fought to keep his balance. His mages on the other hand were not so lucky. Combined with their proximity to the epicenter, the activation of the spell had required them to bind their magic to one another - violently and painfully, their control and magic was ripped from their bodies.

As one, they were sent sliding back on their bellies, left prostrate before a monster.

-

an invisible hand - an invisible  _ claw _ grabbed seteth by the spine. it tore deep inside to his very being, searching. calculating.

wrong

so very very wrong wasn't supposed to bend this way he didn't remember how  


it seized him in such a brutal and sterile manner and he could only bear it push away clutch scrape claw at the floor and  


-

“-bsolute blithering  _ idiots _ !”

Seteth found himself prone again, a sensation he had  _ long  _ grown tired of since coming to this horrid place, but did not - could not - move. The new voice, booming and authoritative, made the throbbing between his eyes all the worse.

“Two dead, and for  _ what _ ?!”

“Major-”

“Save your sniveling, Lieutenant, and get that damn monster back into its cage.”

“How-how do we-”

“ _ Cravens _ , all of you. Grab him and  _ go _ . Lieutenant, if this is how your staff conducts itself here-”

Seteth was hauled up by his arms and the floor pitched nauseatingly beneath him. Very little remained of the complex spellwork from before. He heard the pained moans and saw the mages lying unmoving-  


-before the pain coursed through every fiber of his being and unraveled his soul. He had been consumed, his spine seized by an invisible force, limbs stretching, tearing-

-and the floor around him seemed as if it had been scorched. Did that mean something? Between his racing heart and drowsiness, Seteth felt his hold onto consciousness strenuous at best.

“Your insufferable delusions of grandeur nearly cost us the most valuable prize we have gotten our hands on in centuries. A Crested army could have been nothing more than a dream again-!”

“With the weapon we would not even  _ need _ an army, Major-”

“ _ IS THIS PATHETIC DISPLAY OF PLAYING GOD THE WEAPON?!  _ I will have you thrown into the deepest refinery pit in all of Duscur!”

Seteth’s captors did not give him the chance to test his legs and he was seized under the armpits and dragged back into the bowels of dark and dim halls. The two guards taking him did not speak at first, but he did see them exchange glances once they had rounded the first corner.

“-ould we clean him up?”

“You may, I very well refuse to.”

“Coward.”

“_Shh_!”

-

“Seteth, what  _ is _ your secret?”

He had jumped, as if bit by his surprise, but Seteth felt he had covered it well. Professor Manuela had gestured vaguely, and rather rudely, at his entirety with her dinner fork. 

“I am not quite sure what you mean.”

Manuela tapped her own cheek as if that would answer it. “Your skin, of course! I know several people who would  _ kill _ to have what you have.”

Surely he was indulging in his paranoia too much-

“ _ Truly _ now?” This time, Seteth could not fully hide the tremor in his arms as he folded them.

“Of course! After, what,  _ ten _ years working together I have not seen you sprout so much as a single wrinkle!”

Manuela tittered good naturally as she finished up the remainder of her wine. Shortly after she had launched into several anecdotes of her time at the theater and the skin care practices the actors had tried. For the rest of his meal Seteth had tried to calm the furious pounding of his heart.

-

The incessant buzzing filled Seteth’s ears once more as he was shoved back into his little prison. While he was still unsteady, Seteth found his footing long enough to fall into the little chair and press his hands to his eyes. The stark light of the room did no favors for his tender head.  He felt wetness and Seteth squinted in the hard light to look down at his hands.

Red smeared his fingertips.

Seteth wiped at his face the best he could without the aid of a mirror. He worked methodically and slowly because if he did nothing else he would panic. Seteth focused on his breathing, on his headache, on what information he had learned.

Bile still rose in his throat.

An hour passed and Seteth realized he had been granted a temporary boon (if there could be such a thing could exist in this wretched prison.) For the first time in days he was able to wander without his body laden by drug. Yes, he was tired and in pain, but his limbs no longer felt disconnected from himself and Seteth’s heart felt lighter with independence. At last he could walk without clutching miserably to the walls.

Seteth felt along where the door should have been, seeking a seam or latch. He even pressed against parts of the wall in hopes that he could slide the door back, or activate an unseen mechanism.

But for all his efforts, Seteth only smeared drying blood on the pristine panels.

-

He dreamed of Zanado sometimes. Of homes wet with blood and the butchered remains of his fellow Nabatheans laid out in the streets. Of what remained of Sothis’s home - Serios had told him in a dull and lifeless tone that she had torn it apart during the skirmishes.

She clutched the hearts of some of their brethren and had hidden them away in the mountains. 

“A tomb,” she said, eyes turned to the clouds, but she seemed even farther away. “There shall be a tomb for them. So that they may rest.”

And sometimes Seiros would turn back to him, but her face would warpe into an empty eyed mask and instead of the dead hearts of her friends, family, and neighbors, it was a butcher's blade in the Llieutenant’s hand.

The clouds would be blank empty walls and then the red  _ red red blood _ of Zanado’s newly painted canyon walls would sluice down and Seteth wouldn't be able to move while the lieutenant painted lines over him.

Somehow, he knew Flayn was dead in his dreams, and he didn’t care to fight anymore.

-

“Good. The idiot did not kill you or damage anything important.”

“You will forgive me for being less than thrilled by the news,” Seteth said back in matching clipped tones.

“A- _ ha _ , so you still possess your mental facilities. I suppose there is something to be learned from his project.”

The Major, a tall and square woman, released her vengeful grip on his hair and Seteth refrained from letting his head fall back to the table like an unruly student.

“May I ask what happened? I have never seen such a spell before.”

The Major scoffed, her mask’s beak turning away with a flippant gesture. “A pet project he dug up from the archives. He would have known how inefficient it was had he even bothered to listen to his superiors.”

“What became of…” Seteth’s eyes slid to the blood he had left on the wall.

“Those dead bodies? While it would not have surprised me that you would have killed them during your…  _ thralls _ , it was not. The amount of energy required to perform the damned thing outweighed their combined magic and the activation killed them. Very messy.”

She sounded more disappointed in the lack of research and regulations rather than her fellows were dead.

Seteth looked down at his clenched fists and forced them to lie flat on the table. He felt strangely better. “I see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i might actually finish this


End file.
